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September 1, 2004
New York-based architect Terrence O’Neal,
AIA, has a successful practice, an office overlooking Union
Square, and many friends in the business. But he thinks something
is very wrong with the profession he loves.
“In terms of diversity, the AIA
is about 20 years behind the curve,” says O’Neal,
who contributed to a resolution, proposed in June and ratified
by the AIA board in September, to help improve poor diversity
figures in the notoriously homogenous profession.
The resolution takes a step beyond traditional
measures like scholarships, internships and conferences, resorting
instead to number crunching. The AIA (with the help of a consultant)
hopes to obtain much-needed figures about minority and female
access to the profession, helping paint a clearer picture
of why so few of these groups enter and stay in architecture,
also laying the groundwork for future changes.
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“We need to find out what these
problems are,” says Elisabeth Casqueiro, Managing Director
of Alliances at the AIA, who points to low salaries and long-standing
biases as reasons for architecture’s diversity gap ,
but concedes causes for the issue remain largely a mystery.
Outside of cursory data obtained from its Firm Survey- which
shows 1% minority membership and 11% female membership- the
AIA’s knowledge about minority representation is “remarkably
scarce,” according to the resolution, and to several
AIA officials, while “the data we have is disconnected
and incomplete,” says Ted Landsmark, AIA, head of the
AIA Diversity Committee. Meanwhile long-used methods like
scholarships seem to have made little headway in reversing
the situation, which is very similar to what it was 30 years
ago.
The chosen firm will also carry out focus
groups to supplement hard numbers with stories, it will explore
models in other professions like law and medicine, and compare
data with architectural organizations such as the American
Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the National Collegiate
Accreditation Board (NCARB), the National Accrediation board
(NAB), and the National Organization of Minority Architects
(NOMA). Officials say up to $200,000 could be slated for the
project.
Sam
Lubell
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